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On the edge of the 2010 Olympics, Smurfs and as-yet unfilled promisesBack to video

After seven or so years of covering the preparations for the Vancouver Olympics, I’ve witnessed a lot of stuff. I’ve been primed and ready for the moment when the Games not just come to town but actually take place.I’ve waited for the International Olympic Committee’s obligatory session to start, where the weighty issues of sport, business, culture and all matters intricately woven into the mantra of Olympism are discussed.And I’ve watched as the Main Press Centre has slowly but surely filled with the faces of journalists I’ve met elsewhere in the world.But now that the eve of the Games is upon us, as we face liftoff, I find myself so stunningly overwhelmed that stories and work I’d hoped to do have quickly slipped from my plans.On the lighter side, I’ve wanted to get back to the periodic pieces on the wonderfully eccentric sport of collecting pins. Through Collectors Corner I built an interesting database of oddball pieces of shrapnel that people pin to their lapels. The number of pins out there now is staggering, and every once in a while I see pin-traders slipping into the MPC with a cherished day pass (how do they GET them?) so that they can try and nip a few off the lanyards of volunteers. I’m also trying to capture and publish a long-long-long overdue list of entries to ourDeep Snow pin program.I’m trying to keep my Red Mittens Diary going, telling the stories of interesting people who feel compelled to slip on the knit mitts. It’s one of the most satisfying elements for me now in covering the Olympics because those mittens have become a vector into telling stories about the (sometimes) ordinary lives of ordinary people.I am also finding it difficult to now keep up Olympicreporter’s Map, the Google Maps I created a couple of weeks ago and which has become an unexpected hit. In mid-January my digital reporting colleague Gillian Shaw taught me how to make a Google map, and a couple of weeks ago I piled in all the information I had about venues, pavilions and events into it. I did so more out of a need to empty my notebooks than anything else.What I did not understand was the public demand for such a map; as of today it has been viewed a staggering 370,000 times. Anecdotally I’ve been told that NBC and several other broadcasters and news agencies are now using the map to find out neat places to visit.We’re working on a modification to try and clean up the map and make it less cluttered. But if you have more balloons you want me to post to the map of places to note, send ’em along.Watch for this blog over the next two weeks to have shorter, sharper entries as well. I’m trying to keep you updated with the smaller but interesting things I see around the place.Here’s a few:*The Olympics is, as we know, an enormously complex machine. The Games themselves are probably tied up with more wire and cables and technology than the Pentagon (well, I exaggerate . . .) But what’s that saying about the best laid plans of mice and men . . . ?Who should I spy in the Main Press Centre this afternoon but Ward Chapin, Vanoc’s chief information officer. He’s the top dog in the technology department, the guy whose biggest fear is systems going down, black screens on TVs and big fat zeros on the timing boards.He was standing at a desk, chatting with some workers. As soon as he saw me out of the corner of his eye he just about blanched. I asked him what brought him into the MPC. He looked a bit embarrassed.His brand new Samsung phone had stopped delivering email and he was getting help to fix it. Bad time to run into a reporter.*If you’ve been downtown lately, you’ve witnessed Smurfdom. All of those volunteers and workers in their bright blue jackets have generated the somewhat uncharitable nickname “Smurfs”, even though everybody agrees it applies.I walked into the (somewhat uninspiring) restaurant hall at the MPC today, which boasts three small kiosks and a McDonald’s that I swear you could pick up and lay over any McDonald’s in the city and not know the difference.A huge gaggle of brand-new red-jacketed McDonald’s employees were being shown the place. It was almost overwhelming.“Hmm, if you call Vanoc’s volunteers Smurfs, what do you call that,” I joked to the counter staff, motioning to the red crowd.“We call them the Lil’ Devils,” Tina Drake, one of the servers, shot back.*And lastly, this hot off the press from the IOC, which is working as fast and furiously to make itself relevant in the social media world: they have just registered their one millionth Facebook fan.Now, that’s surely momentous. Especially in light of Sir Martin Sorrell’s remarks to the IOC at last October’s Congress in Copenhagen, where he told them they had to get hip with the younger generation.“If they are going online, you go online. Don’t deny it or file it in the too difficult folder”,” he said. “You have to let them play with your content, your assets in their own way.”The IOC is learning that lesson quickly. When they hit the million-mark bullseye on Facebook, they sent out the news – on Facebook and Twitter (which to my mind is preaching to the converted.)But for those oldies in the MPC who still aren’t with the times, they fired the good news off in – you guessed it – a printable press release. (And forgot to tell us the actual Facebook name. It’s Olympic Games.)

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